Do Not Neglect This Great Salvation

In one paragraph

First Baptist Jackson was in Hebrews 2 this Sunday, working through the passage's warning against neglecting salvation and its argument that God has authenticated the gospel through those who heard Jesus directly, through signs and wonders, and through the gifts of the Spirit. Pastor Phil connected that ancient warning to the particular shape of unbelief common in American life today. The service...

Read together

1. Revelation 4:11 opening prayer/doxology: 'you are worthy, O Lord, our God, to receive glory and honor and power... you created all things'
2. Hebrews 1:1-2 God spoke long ago through the prophets but in these last days has spoken through his Son
3. Hebrews 2:1 central text: 'we must pay closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it'
4. Hebrews 2:3 rhetorical warning: 'how will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation'
5. Hebrews 2:3-4 gospel confirmed by those who heard, God testifying with signs, wonders, miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit
6. Hebrews 2:5-8 God did not subject the world to come to angels, quoting Psalm 8
7. Hebrews 2:9 Jesus made lower than angels, crowned with glory, tasting death for everyone
8. Psalm 8:4-6 what is man that God takes thought of him, mankind made lower than God/angels, crowned with glory and given rule
9. John 14:6 Jesus said 'I am the way, I am the truth, I am the life and no one comes to the Father except through me'
10. John 17:20 Jesus praying not only for his disciples but for those who would believe because of their word
11. John 20:29 Jesus to Thomas: blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe
12. James 2:10 if you err in one part of the law you have broken the whole thing
13. Matthew 6:12 forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us
14. Psalm 139:23-24 communion prayer: 'search me and know my heart, see if there be any wicked way in me'
15. 1 Corinthians 11:23-25 words of institution at communion: the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and the cup

Talk about it

1. Pastor talked about drifting, saying we have no neutral in the gearbox and that if we stop swimming upstream we will drift away. Where in your own life have you noticed that kind of slow drift happening, and what brought you back?
2. The author of Hebrews was writing to second-generation Christians who heard the gospel from those who had been with Jesus directly. How does that chain of testimony, from Jesus to those who heard him to us, affect the weight you give to what you have received?
3. Pastor pointed to signs, wonders, miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit as ways God authenticates the message. Which of those do you find easiest to accept as evidence, and which do you find hardest, and why?
4. Pastor said universalism is the most popular heresy of our day and that the American tendency is to assume everyone will be fine in the end. How does that cultural pressure show up in your own thinking or in conversations you have with people you care about?
5. At the communion table, Pastor asked whether we come to it by rote because it is time, or because we are genuinely trusting in the great salvation it represents. What would it look like in practice to not neglect that salvation in the way you live day to day?